Jennifer Brown/The Star-Ledger New Jersey transportation maintenance crew including Tim Mulvey paints over graffiti along Routes 1& 9 under the Pulaski Skyway on the Newark-Jersey City border.

NEWARK — From perhaps the most repugnant spot in all of New Jersey, the underside of the decrepit Pulaski Skyway, Timothy Mulvey paints over colorful but hard-to-decipher gang symbols.

On a day as gray as the cover-up paint he uses to hide graffiti under the west end of the skyway in Newark, Mulvey occasionally gets splashed from above by water runoff containing godknowswhat.

Dispatched to a concrete jungle of grime, strewn bottles and razor wire, Mulvey is part of a state Department of Transportation "SWAT" team that is cleaning up New Jersey one mile at a time.

Based in part on the "broken windows theory" that helped make New York City a more inviting place by preventing smaller problems from turning into bigger ones, New Jersey’s quality-of-life initiative revolves around removing litter, painting over graffiti, repairing potholes and guide rails, mowing grass and cutting overgrown brush and trees that block signs.

In the last year, DOT workers have painted over nearly 23,000 square yards of graffiti and picked up nearly 6 million pounds of litter, often with the help of inmates, state transportation officials said. The state also has revived its Adopt-A-Highway program, and several companies already have committed to the beautification effort.

State Transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson, who began the campaign to keep the Garden State from turning into the Garbage State, said it was a matter of setting priorities.

"Litter, graffiti, didn’t even register on the list of the priorities in the state," he said. "New Jersey was becoming a real filthy area."

Interstate 287, from its southern end to Piscataway, with its sound walls and overpasses, "started to look like the South Bronx in the 1980s, with all the graffiti," Simpson said.

Last year, snow covered the trash, delaying the efforts. But more cooperative temperatures this year has allowed DOT crews to attack the litter — including bear and deer carcasses — early and often.

DOT managers from the north, central and south regions meet every two weeks to measure the success of the cleanup efforts. During his travels around the state, Simpson takes photos when he sees litter or graffiti.

"People are coming up and telling me they’ve never seen the roads as clean as they are," Simpson said.

Jennifer Brown/The Star-LedgerNew Jersey transportation maintenance crew including Tim Mulvey paints over graffiti along Routes 1& 9 under the Pulaski Skyway on the Newark-Jersey City border.

But Phil Craig of Montclair, who has been chasing the DOT for 2½ years to get it to fix rusting and graffiti-covered highway railroad bridges, said rail spans he pointed out on Interstate 80 and Route 46 in Wayne and the Garden State Parkway in Saddle Brook remain untouched.

"I’m not impressed," Craig said.

Craig, who as a rail operations and infrastructure planner helped coordinate railroad systems from Turkey to Taipei, said New Jersey railroad bridges have become "orphans," unclaimed by any authority.

Aside from aesthetics, there are financial reasons for the cleanup efforts.

Leaders at a Parsippany company that provides real estate brokerage and relocation services, were embarrassed to have clients travel from Newark Liberty International Airport to Parsippany and see the litter along the way, Simpson said.

Between the trash and taxes, the company was considering moving the company and its nearly 1,500 employees out of the state. But tax incentives and the state’s cleanup efforts have persuaded the company to stay, and it is planning to move to a new facility in Madison, said Simpson

The cleanup efforts have not been without setbacks.

About two months ago, a cleanup crew had just painted over gang symbols and other graffiti on the northbound side of I-287 in Middlesex County.

"Then they were over on the southbound side," Simpson said. "While they were painting the southbound side, a bunch of guys got out of a car and started spray-painting the wall (on I-287 North) again."

"It still amazes me how the graffiti artists get to the places they get to without getting caught — it just dumbfounds me," said Woodbridge Mayor John McCormac, whose police force has agreed to help the DOT in efforts to apprehend vandals.

"I’d rather the graffiti artists come see me. We’ll give them plenty of bridges and places in town they can paint, to express their artistic abilities that way," McCormac says.

Back under the Pulaski Skyway, Mulvey, his face and pants dotted with specks of paint, uses a gas-powered sprayer to cover up another gang symbol.

"I never know what they say most of the time," he says.

In Paterson, DOT cleanup crew members kept scratching their heads over recurring tags with the word "AIDS" — until they found it stood for "And It Don’t Stop."

While Mulvey paints, Michael Martyn uses a picker to grab litter. He has plenty to choose from, including fast food bags, stray hub cabs and a random pair of plastic goggles. Mary Mendez this day is responsible for traffic safety to keep the crew out of harm’s way, and Joseph DeVita Jr. is the assistant crew supervisor of the crew, which is based in Lodi.

Despite his efforts last Monday, Mulvey didn’t hold much hope that the graffiti would stay covered for long.

"By the weekend," was his prediction for when his gray paint — sound barrier walls get a brown hue — would be tagged again by gangs.

But Mulvey and DeVita and Martyn and Mendez will be back, too.

"You can’t be complacent with it," Mulvey said. "You still have to go out and do your job."